About

“Broken bodies — broken dreams: violence against women exposed offers a powerful testimony of the different types of gender-based violence experienced by women and girls worldwide throughout their lives, through the use of photographs, individual case studies and illustrative text. The publication is part of OCHA/IRIN’s ongoing campaign to highlight the issues of violence against women through film, text and photography. ”

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3 Responses to “About”

This is such an important blog, with so many good articles about such rarely discussed issues happening in the world today. Thanks for taking such a stand.
I was hoping that you might be interested in this video I made regarding domestic sex trafficking victims in NYC- and maybe would spread the word in Broken Dreams.

Rachel Lloyd runs GEMS, the Girls Educational and Mentoring Services in Harlem to help rehabilitate girls who are transitioning out of the sex industry- some of them have been involved for most of their lives in one way or another. Many of them have been abused or are coming from broken homes. This video gives them a voice to talk about a world that most of us can hardly relate to, but is a huge problem in our society today. It’s rarely discussed, partly because it involves issues of class and race and sex, and generalizations that hurt people are easy to make. It’s also hard to come across any information about domestic sex trafficking, though there is a bounty of information when it comes to crossing borders. Neither circumstance is better, but there needs to be more attention given to the exploitation happening in the United States today- and maybe more sympathy can be had for these girls and their situation.
This video was made for a contest on Current TV called “Seeds of Tolerance.” The winner of the contest will receive $100,000, and if this video wins, $50,000 will be donated to GEMS to help the victims of this terrible American sex industry. If you’re interested- check it out and vote for the video at:http://www.currenttv.com/make/vc2/sot
It’s called “The Making of a Girl,” voting ends this Friday, December 1st.

Hi, I know this is not the most “kosher” way to query a blog, but I do not see contact info for you on the page.
Hello, my name is Beth Fehlbaum. My debut novel, Courage in Patience, releases from Kunati Books on September 1, 2008. I am writing to request that you review my book or allow me to be a guest on your blog or site.
I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a family member, and I am also an experienced Language Arts teacher. I am passionate about communicating to readers that there is hope in the face of what seems hopeless, whether it is sexual abuse, racism, bullying, homophobia, or even censorship. My novel is a story of love, forgiveness, parental responsibility, and, most of all, of discovering what we are made of when we face our worst fears.

I am currently lining up blog and website “appearances”; I sincerely hope that you will consider hosting me. Please e-mail me at beth@bethfehlbaum.com, if you have a date available from September 1, onward. We can agree on a specific date when you contact me. Thank you!

SYNOPSIS OF NOVEL:
Ashley Nicole Asher’s life changes forever on the night her mother, Cheryl, meets Charlie Baker. Within a year of her mother’s marriage to Charlie, typical nine-year-old Ashley’s life becomes a nightmare of sexual abuse and emotional neglect. Bundling her body in blankets and sleeping in her closet to try to avoid Charlie’s nighttime assaults, she is driven by rage at age 15 to tell her mother, in spite of the threats Charlie has used to keep Ashley silent. Believing that telling will make Charlie go away, instead it reveals to Ashley where she lies on her mother’s list of priorities.
“We’re just going to move on now,” Cheryl tells Ashley. “Go to your room.” Ashley’s psyche splinters into shards of glass, and she desperately tries to figure a way out, while at the same time battling numbness and an inability to remember what happened when she blacked out after Charlie tackled her. She knew that when she awoke her clothes were disheveled and the lower-half of her body was covered in bright red blood– but she has only a blank spot in the “video” of her memory.
When Ashley’s friend, Lisa, sees a note from Cheryl telling Ashley that Charlie would never “do those things to her,” and insisting that she apologize for accusing him of molesting her, Lisa forces dazed Ashley to make an outcry to her teacher, Mrs. Chapman.
By the end of the day, Ashley’s father, David, who has not seen Ashley since she was three months old, is standing in the offices of Child and Family Services. He brings her home to the small East Texas town of Patience, where he lives with his wife, Beverly, their son, Ben, and works with his brother, Frank. Its neighboring town, Six Shooter City, is so quirky, it’s practically on the cusp of an alternate universe; a trip to the Wal-Mart reveals to visitors that “there’s either something in the water..or family trees around here don’t fork.”
Through the summer school English class/ Quest for Truth taught by Beverly, an “outside-the-box” high school English teacher whose passion for teaching comes second only to her insistence upon authenticity, Ashley comes to know Roxanne Blake, a girl scarred outwardly by a horrific auto crash and inwardly by the belief that she is “Dr. Frankenstein’s little experiment”;
Wilbur “Dub” White, a fast-talking smart mouth whose stepfather is a white supremacist who nearly kills a man while Dub watches from the shadows, forcing Dub to realize that he cannot live with the person that he is, any longer;
Zaquoiah “Z.Z.” Freeman, one of the few African-Americans in Patience, whose targeted-for-extinction family inherited the estate of one of Patience’s founding families and has been given the charge to “turn this godforsaken town on its head”;
Hector “Junior” Alvarez, a father at sixteen whose own father was killed in prison, who works two jobs and is fueled by the determination to “do it right” for his son, “3”, and his girlfriend, Moreyma;
T.W. Griffin, whose football-coach father expects him to be Number One at everything, and whose mother naively believes that he is too young to think about sex; and
Kevin Cooper, a not-so-bright football player with a heart of gold, whose mother, Trini, a reporter for the local paper, is instrumental in exposing the ugliness that is censorship.
Every person in the class is confronted with a challenge that they must face head-on. The choices they make will not be easy—but they will be life-altering. With the exception of her mother and step-father, Ashley is surrounded by people who overcome their fear to embrace authenticity and truth– the only way to freedom. But will Ashley have the inner-fortitude to survive the journey to recovery and the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Will Ashley find her voice, speak up for herself, and break the bondage of her abusive past?
Realizing “she’s gonna need a lot more than we have,” David and Bev enlist the help of Scott “Dr. Matt” Matthews, an experienced, slightly unconventional therapist who insists that Ashley can and must come out hiding in the closet in her mind.
The Chris Crutcher novel, Ironman, is taught by Beverly Asher in the summer school class. When T.W.’s overbearing parents read the book, they decide that the book should be censored, and they involve the pastor of Patience’s largest, most conservative church to lead the fight through the Purify Patience organization. Its mission is to cleanse Patience of Profanity, Promiscuity, and Parent-Bashing Pedagogy—all complaints the group has about the novel, Ironman. Its hidden agenda, however, is to return Patience to a time when “Patience was 100% white”, “women knew their place”,”everyone had plenty of money”, and “Christian values were taught in school.”
The censoring, pseudo-Christian, white-supremacist, misogynist organization is exposed for what it is in a courageous move by one of its own (well..his mother threatens to twist his ear off if he doesn’t speak up), isolating the pastor and causing most of his “flock” to deny they ever knew him. National and world press attention shine speculation on the dirty little secrets hidden in Patience, and its inhabitants are forced to examine their own values and beliefs.
Alone in the dark, Ashley must face her worst fears in a pivotal scene between her, Charlie, and her mother. Through this confrontation, Ashley at last finds the strength to advocate for her own right to exist in a world that is free of abuse. She, too, has found Courage in Patience.